Tips For Your Vet Clinic's Email Marketing Campaign

Posted
on 16 January 2020

You know people love their pets - but did you know the animal and pet service industry has the highest email open rate of any industry?

In 2020, email marketing still matters. With so many varied communication platforms now available online with widespread usage across them all, businesses have had to adapt their strategies alongside them. It's hard to keep up with the latest trends and most useful ways to communicate with your clients, especially when these channels are constantly evolving. While there still exists a movement towards social media as a main player in digital strategies, email marketing campaigns remain at the forefront of being an effective method to target your clients and market your business in a cost-effective manner. But how can email help your vet clinic's digital marketing strategy?

Let's start with why email marketing still matters:

Increase Engagement & Improve Revenue:

The facts don't lie - email marketing presents significant opportunity to increase profits and engagement when done correctly. Research has shown email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring new clients than some of the biggest social media channels. Additionally, 61% of consumers would prefer brands contacted them via email.

Greater Access:

Think about the varying ways you can check your emails. It no longer matters if you're out and about with no access to the home computer - as long as there's internet connection, email providers now exist on tablet's, phone's and laptop's and are an everyday occurrence. Your clients have greater accessibility to their emails than ever before, which increases your chances of being seen.

Retain Clients:

Emails, whether they are read or not, allow you to stay at the top of your clients mind. Over 68% of people leave a business because they perceive the business no longer cares about them. When you send emails of value, information and interest to your clients, this shows you care.

Tracking & Measuring:

The ability to analyse data from your marketing efforts is like gold to any business. When using an email marketing platform, you'll receive valuable insights to your clients interests and behaviours from the metrics provided. You'll have access to bounce rates, click-through-rates and knowledge to which of your emails gained the most traction with your clients. With this information, you can fine tune future email marketing campaigns to increase your sales and eventually your profits.

Now you have an idea of why email marketing campaigns are important to your vet clinic. So, how can you get started?

Tips For Veterinary Clinic Email Marketing Campaigns

1. Create Related Pages:

Within an email marketing campaign, you have the opportunity to create "teasers" that encourage action from your client. For example: if you have a new event on dog training or a promotion for a service, create a teaser with a link that takes the client to the specific page that will give them more information. This reduces the effort required to get them to take action - this will also give you great data on the results of each component of that campaign based on traffic to the page.

2. Segment Your List:

It might seem like a trivial task at first, but taking the time to segment your list can greatly pay off for you in the long run. A standard mail list is fine for monthly newsletters, generic product/service promotion or event announcements. However, with a segmented list, you can actively target a specific audience you know is more likely to convert depending on the topic of the email. In the past, a segmented campaign has generated a 760% increase in email revenue.

Say you have a bunch of inventory you'd like to sell quickly and you want to promote this via email. You could send it to the generic mail list, but all the inventory that needs clearing out is related to cats. With a segmented target list, you could email all clients you know who own cats and send it to them. This way, you're not wasting anyone's time by sending emails unrelated to their interests or needs, maximising the opportunity to generate leads on this promotion.

3. Optimise For Mobile:

We mentioned earlier how accessibility is a driving factor in the importance of email marketing campaigns. Did you know mobile accounts for 46% of all email opens? It only makes sense then that you ensure they are optimised for mobile, making it as easy as possible for your clients to have the best experience. Check with your vet marketing specialist for more info on this.

4. Boost Your Credibility:

It's simple and yet so important: provide easily accessible and correct contact information in your email. The main features to include are your operating hours, contact phone and email and of course, your website. Our services offer the one-click unsubscribe email marketing tool which is industry standard and complies with Australian spam rules.

5. Review Your Metrics:

Time is precious for any business owner, which is why you shouldn't keep sending emails that don't work. By reviewing your metrics, you can grasp what does and doesn't work with your client base. Don't be afraid to mix it up within reason and test out new things if you're having a poor success rate. Check your format and layout, consider the timing of when you schedule the emails. Try changing one thing at a time, not all at once, otherwise you won't know which aspect of your campaign changes helped improve your success.

6. Be Design Consistent:

To align with your veterinary expertise, you want to ensure your emails look as professional as possible. Templates are crucial in making this happen. However, before you can get going with a template, you have to plan out exactly what you want to show your clients. Perhaps you have a new product or service, or a "Tip of the Month" such as when a change in season brings a new danger to dogs or cats and you'd like to get the word out to your clients. Planning exactly what you want to include in your campaigns is critical to the template layout. Where to place items, layouts, colours, buttons, links, and even whitespace should be consistent so clients always know to scroll to the footer for the customer service number for example. Don't be scared to change your design if it really isn't working, however, welcoming your clients to the new and improved newsletter is a great way to sell your new newsletter.

7. Build Excitement:

If you've got something new coming up that you're excited for your clients to know about, you don't need to wait until it's arrival to build excitement. Get the word out early about the launch date and generate some buzz about what you've got coming up. Maybe you're holding an event or have new dog leads and harnesses coming in - whatever it is, people get excited about their pets and you can perpetuate this buzz with a simple email. Create a special page for the event/product/promotion within your website, which is an easy way to get more information to the client (and a way to take action) before you send the email out.

8. Be Creative With Subject Lines:

A subject line can be the make or break between whether an email gets opened or not. In fact, even the simple addition of an appropriate emoji in a subject line can see a 56% higher open rate than one without an emoji - but use tactfully and limitedly, otherwise this could be off putting to clients. Make sure your subject lines are always clear and create an immediate emotional response. For example: "Are your pets missing out? " Additionally, you can switch it up with emojis over the festive season to bring attention to holiday promotions or events.

Thanks team - we love working with you. A few years ago you came to our rescue and have been very proactive in guiding us ever since, doing exactly what is needed and delivering consistently great work. Because you cover it all we consider you an ...